You can not talk about honey as if this was just another crop and livestock product or a sweetener. The creation of honey indicates all nature. It is advisable therefore to start from the beginning, before the honey is transformed in this precious food and medicine together.
The plant life falls, fertilized and multiply without legs. This is one party responsible insects and wind. So we separate the pollen, the sperm is the male plant of two species, and anemofili entomofili, depending on the method chosen by each plant to transfer the pollen from male to female. This process is called pollination and undertake primarily by bees. The pollination is very important for the planet. Without it most of the living beings would be lost, like bonds and the Einstein without bees the human race is only 4 years old. The offer is therefore invaluable.
The incentive to visit the plants that bees and transfer sperm from male to female flower is nectar plants and direct it to the goal as possible and with a pleasant scent and vibrant colors. Nectar is the secretion of special glands plant nectar, located within and near the base of the flowers, which secrete a sugary juice with 80% humidity. But not only that. To not bore you will simply say that the nectar is a biological puzzle than 180 different pieces to see more detailed below. The bee makes 12 trips on an average day. On each trip visits 200 to 300 flowers. A single collector visits an average of 2500-3500 per day. Then, every morning starting from a strong hive around 20,000 collectors, who by the end of the day will be able to visit 50-70 million flowers (note that most of them have herbal properties are valuable for human health). The 12 loads a day weighing just .36 hundredths of a gram. After work 20 days following removal of 63% humidity nectar each collector will collect only 1.5 gram of honey.
The honey comes from flowers of plants, so turned to honey from the nectar or honeydew is, that sugary juice to recruit bees to pass through an insect parasites on plants. Such plants are pine and fir. In pine pinus halepensis parasitic insect marsellina hellenica located in Greece and the coast of Asia Minor. From this awesome duo produced the pine, honey exceptional flavor and aroma, rich in minerals. In spruce again parasite parasite physokermes hemicryphus, honeydew producing exceptional quality. The mountain of Menalon elatomelo produced a very special features not found in any other region of Greece and the world. Honey is the only Greek honey Protected Designation of Origin (PDO).
Honey as mentioned above is not simply a sweetener such as sugar, which can cause many health problems. It is a product of great biological value of plant and animal origin yet. Plant the nectar plant and animal enzymes that incorporates the bee in honey, which causes fermentation and decomposition of plant sugars so that the final product.
We said earlier that the nectar and then the honey is composed of 180 different substances. But what makes the honey is not as insurmountable the components it contains, but the coexistence of all these elements into a whole with specific proportions and synleitourgikotita in human body. This harmonious union gives unique properties to honey.
The chemical composition of honey
In a first general classification, we can say that honey is composed of 16-17% moisture, 77-78% carbohydrates and 6% of all the other ingredients.
Carbohydrates: These are all the sugars of honey are numerous and of many categories. Briefly, I will say that all the sugars of honey are two simple, natural sugars: fructose and glucose. These two sugars no per se taking the nectar the bee from flowers. It is a product of another division of the sugar sucrose, which is predominantly in the natural juices of flowers. This division is achieved by using an enzyme which has bee glands and called invertase. When the bee is going to get a flower nectar, which consists mainly of sucrose. The nectar is transferred to the social stomach and there also releases an enzyme called invertase. The invertase splits sucrose into its two simple sugar content, fructose and glucose. So what would make our body painful, is to break the sugars have already done by bees and is ready for us.
After the discovery of chromatography in 1952 another 20 were observed sugar content useful for the organism present in the honey out of fructose and glucose. The honey sugars are digested very quickly by the body and are a source of energy and wellness, empowering people damaged by physical and mental work, athletes, pregnant women etc.
Extras
(A) Organic Acids
Have so far been detected in honey 18 organic acids with the main gloukoniko produced in honey by enzymatic degradation of dextrose.
(B) Proteins and Amino Acids
Honey has some protein and amino acids, but their participation in the formulation is low. Specifically, they identified 12 amino acids from the pollen of which is included in small amounts in honey.
(C) metal salts (minerals)
Play an important role in metabolism and nutrition, and are components of bones and cells. Participate in various enzyme systems and regulate the acidity. Some of them are potassium, chlorine, sulfur, calcium, sodium, phosphorus, magnesium, silicon, iron, manganese, copper, cobalt, zinc, silver, tungsten, iridium, nickel, vanadium, quartz and barium.
(D) Enzymes
The enzymatic reactions are the basis of life. The main enzymes are added to the nectar by the bees and contribute decisively to the transformation into honey. Even when the honey is ripe enzymes continue to operate within. So call right honey live food. As mentioned above, invertase, secreted by glands which surround the crop of honey bees, splits sucrose into simple sugars (fructose, glucose). The dimension, another enzyme produced by the glands of the honeybee, is the enzyme that hydrolyzes starch and dextrin.
In addition, honey contains, glykodoxydasi, an enzyme discovered recently, and it is extremely important because it is considered responsible for one of his most important properties of honey. The glykodoxyzasi prepares gloukoniko acid, the principal acid in honey and in the process produced including hydrogen peroxide. The latter has proved to be the basis for the antibacterial action of honey. Indicate fee and other enzymes in the honey like inoulasi the phosphatase, catalase and yporoxydasi.
(E) Vitamins
Honey is generally not considered particularly vitamin. However, the vitamin, which is mainly B complex, although not sufficient to meet daily requirements, establish the minimum presence of favorable conditions for absorption and assimilation of sugars and their intervention in general metabolism is crucial. As we are mainly harmonization, coexistence, and coexistence of substance that makes the beneficial effects of honey truly unsurpassed.
(F) Fragrances
Are various substances such as tannins, alkaloids, glycosides, aldeeides, ketones, esters, carotene, polyphenols compound, glycerides, phospholipids, palmitic acid, choline and others give it all the peculiarities of the aroma, taste and color.
Thanassis Gkartsos (with considerable assistance from the bibliographic treatise of Th Mpika, All About Honey, Athens 1991)
